


All the Missing Traces

by JBK405



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28224927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JBK405/pseuds/JBK405
Summary: Trace Martez has been doing her best to get by in the years since the rise of the Galactic Empire.  She's not a rebel or smuggler, just an independent freighter captain with her usual trade routes and a few reliable customers.  But she does remember what it means to help people who need it, so when a normal transport job gets complicated she can't quite bring herself to just walk away.Approximately 10 BBY.
Kudos: 7





	1. Arrival at Abregado-Rae

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfic spawned from a few idle thoughts I had after re-binging season seven of _The Clone Wars_.
> 
> Fair warning, I am very much an Old _Star Wars_ fan and I was forged in the Pre-Prequel Expanded Universe stories. I aim for strict canon compliance when it comes to the story itself, but a lot of my background and universal references may be 20 years out of date.

Slowly easing back the repulsor controls, Trace Martez relaxed as she felt the _Silver Angel_ settle into the docking cradle. Outside the viewport was the familiar layout of the Abregado-rae Spaceport, and though Abregao-rae didn't fit any definition of "home" Trace could come up with, familiarity was a comfort all by itself. Especially after three months spent trying to pull a new trade route together that always seemed like it just needed _one_ _more contact_ to become self-sustaining. With the way contacts and rumors of contracts always lead from one barely-charted port to another, any touch of the known and understood was refreshing. Even if it was a dangerous, ugly hive that did its best to trap you every time you settled in.

Glancing over the control panel -- pleased to note that nothing was flashing red or crying out for attention -- Trace powered down the engines to a low energy draw and begin their standby recycling. Normally after landing she would have preferred a complete shutdown to give her ship a chance to rest (The _Angel_ had sure earned it), but Abregado-rae was the type of planet where you sometimes found yourself departing rather more quickly than you expected when you first landed. Especially from its main spaceport, which was not a place you wanted to be stuck for an extra half an hour while your engines worked up. Trace found herself stopping here frequently, usually at least once every-other month if not more, and she had learned her lessons well.

And on the note of lessons she had learned on Abregado-rae, after she unbuckled herself and climbed out out of the pilot's chair she reached into one of the overhead bins and carefully brought out the pistol and holster she carried when she came to ports of this ilk. She preferred working in the areas of space where your skill with a blaster didn't factor into which jobs you took, but that wasn't always where the currents took you. Slowly unwrapping the belt, she buckled it around her waist and strapped the holster to her leg. It was an old pistol, a stripped-down DC-15s that had been basic even when the model was brand new during the Clone Wars, but it worked and it _kept_ working. Reliability was what Trace cared about, since that was what enabled her to avoid having to use it. Big enough to be visible, sturdy enough to be functional, and she had worn it often enough to carry herself properly. Simply having the weapon present let her side-step a lot of problems in the wrong ports. For any problems that she couldn't side-step by carrying a blaster, well....it had always worked out so far. Usually, anyway.

After settling the blaster, Trace checked the chrono and was about to reach for the comm station when she saw the access door to the port open and a lone figure came through. Whoever it was didn't look immediately familiar, but they strode with a self-confident purpose that made Trace clock them as Imperial even before they were close enough for her to clearly make out the uniform. Once he was close enough for her to make out the details she recognized the style, and since she was still alone in the ship she didn't bother to conceal the disgust that twisted her lip. Imperial Customs & Inspections. She had no love for the Empire at the best of times, and considerably less when dealing with their officious minions. Customs & Inspections least of all, especially here. On Abregado-rae, C&I barely bothered to pretend they weren't skimming every piece of cargo running through the port, and they didn't bother to distinguish between the smuggled goods and the legitimate cargo. If anything, they targeted the legitimate freighters more since they didn't need to worry about reprisals. Considering that this Inspector had shown up mere minutes after Trace put down, he had probably been waiting for her, which almost guaranteed he was here to cause her problems until she paid him off. Not that that was the worst possibility, since any reasonable freighter captain factored these into the costs of a run. The few "honest" Inspectors were worse, because they put so much effort into showing that they weren't Like That that their actual inspections were more invasive and punitive and always seemed to wind up with them finding an excuse to cause you trouble anyway.

Leaving the blaster on her hip -- it would be more suspicious for an experienced shipper to not go armed here and she didn't want him to get _too_ greedy -- Trace flipped the switches to lower the _Angel_ 's cargo bay doors and walked to the opening. The timing was almost perfect, and the ramp fell at the Inspector's feet just as he came to a stop. Putting on her best I-Know-Why-You're-Here-Let's-Get-This-Over-With smile, she gave a half-wave and shouted "Good morning, Inspector. What can I do for you?"

* * *

All told, a 500 credit "filing fee" wasn't too bad, and it didn't even max out the section of her profits that Trace had marked off for 'expenses'. It grated on Trace that she had to pay the money at all, especially the sheer gall that inspector had shown when he pointed out how 'suspicious' it was that she _wasn't_ smuggling something, but she knew you had to go along to get along. If it got this particular officiant out of her hair all the better, and her smile was all natural as she watched the door close behind him as he left the docking bay. Once she was sure he wouldn't walk right back through the door after 'remembering' another point, she turned back into the _Angel_ 's cargo bay and did a quick walkthrough herself to check her cargo and make sure it was all properly sealed. Types like that weren't above literally pocketing something extra in addition to their bribe, and she didn't want to find this out the hard way.

Once she was satisfied that he hadn't cracked open a case when she wasn't looking, Trace went back to the cockpit and keyed the comm signal she had been about to send when the Inspector had arrived. "Lesellej, this is Trace. I've landed at Abrogado-rae and am ready to make delivery. No unexpected problems. I'm docked at Bay 72."

The holo-projector fizzed briefly before coalescing into Lesellej's low, rotund body. "Ah, Martez, welcome back and so wonderful to hear you again." His olfactory antenna were swaying around aimlessly, searching for the scent-source of the sounds he was hearing, but otherwise he was calm and steady. Trace had only ever met a handful of Sljee in her life, but none of the others were ever able to hold a holo-conversation as calmly as Lesellej was. Their antenna were always whipping around in a frenzy in a desperate effort to make sense of sound apparently coming from nowhere. Normally they could only make it five minutes before it overwhelmed them and they had to break contact, but Lesellej had such self-control that he could hold entire conversations with barely any obvious strain. "When you set off to build that trade route I worried you might never return to our little homestead."

His tone wasn't mocking -- at least not so you could tell -- but nonetheless Trace grit her teeth and had to bite back a sudden sharp retort. "You know I could never stay away from you," was what she said instead.

"Oh, that makes me so happy to hear." Lesellej's antenna briefly twisted around each other, then fanned out again. "We simply must get together and catch up after we're finished here, but first to business. Bay 72, you said? I'll have the crew over to unload shortly."

"I'll be here," Trace said, and broke the contact. Leaning back in her chair, she considered if she would have time to begin working on the gyro for the ventral turret before Lesellej's docking crew arrived. 'Shortly' for a Sljee could mean anything from ten minutes to two hours, and she wondered whether she'd be more frustrated at sitting here doing nothing for hours, or getting the turret halfway open and then having to put it right back together again.

She had just decided to start on the turret, but hadn't yet even begun pulling out her tools, when the port doors opened and the familiar figures of Lesellej's crew shambled in. She looked down at her chono and noted that it hadn't even been five minutes, which was short even for 'shortly'. They had to have been parked on the same bay block to get here this fast, and there was no reason for Lesellej to have had them just sitting there unless he already knew when and where she had docked. And if he knew that...

Forcing a grin onto her face again, she waved to the docking crew and internally argued with herself over how much of the Inspector's bribe Lesellej had managed to claim for his own cut.

* * *

"That slimy little greedy polymelic piece of..." Trace grumbled to herself over her drink, but she had enough self-control to do it quietly so the rest of the cantina's patrons wouldn't overhear. She didn't want it getting out that she had been cheated -- that would make her look weak and invite more predation -- and she also didn't want it getting out that she had a grudge against Lesellej. That would require her to either take public action against him -- or else again look weak -- or force _him_ to take action against _her_ for the same reason. None of which appealed to her. So, instead she hunched over her half-bottle of wine and grumbled at Lesellej, the Imperial Customs & Inspection service, and the galaxy at large. She raised the bottle and knocked back a moderate dose and ran through it all in her mind again.

The part which burned the worst was that Lesellej hadn't even scammed her that badly. She'd still make a profit off this run, if not as good as she could have. He probably wouldn't spread the story around because he wouldn't want any other freighter captains to worry about him cutting into their money, so this wouldn't damage her reputation, either. Frankly, this wouldn't even permanently put her off working with him again, because the next time she was running deep in the black the chance for a not-great-but-still-good profit would be too good to pass up. But he'd been able to do it so easily, and he had so little to fear about pissing her off that he didn't even go to a large effort to hide it. It made her feel small, just like when she was a kid and she and her sister had been at the mercy of all the forces that controlled Coruscant around them. Not just the titans like the Hutts and Jedi, but even small-time moneylenders like Pintu, who tossed them pittances that they were desperate for. She and Rafa had gotten into trouble, Big Trouble, trying to escape that part of their lives, but at times like this it felt like she never had.

And all this for a shipment of meiloorun fruit.

She raised the bottle again, but before she could bring it to her lips she felt a hand lightly grip her shoulder. "Captain Martez?" Trace began to turn as soon as she felt the pull, and she caught a glimpse of orange skin and lekku and for a second -- one brief fiery second -- her mind thought _Ahsoka?_ before she recognized the accent and realized that the speaker was obviously from Ryloth. A female Twi'lek. A _large_ Twi'lek was Trace's next thought as she looked up and realized that the hand was still holding on to her shoulder, but then she recognized that the grip wasn't tight, just trying to get her attention. "Excuse me, are you Captain Martez?" The Twi'lek's voice was a deep basso, almost a rumble, but sounded polite.

Trace shook her head minutely to clear her thoughts, and also leaned back to pull her shoulder out from underneath the other's hand. "Yes, I'm Trace Martez. Can I help you?"

The Twi'lek smiled, and with Trace still looking up at her from this angle it might have looked threatening, but it was soft enough. "My name is Sielo'tan. I'm looking to hire a freighter, and I was told that you and the _Silver Angel_ may be just what I need."

"Is that so?" Trace did her best to look around surreptitiously, which wasn't very easy with Sielo'tan practically standing atop her. This cantina was one of the ones that skirted the lines between being a home for smugglers and a base for those involved in honest shipping (As much honest shipping as Abrogado-rae had, anyway). It could be a very good place to make connections and arrange a contract, but any relationship which started here had a good chance of going sideways in one way or another. Especially if one side knew more than the other when things started. "What is it that you need?"

"I've got some sensitive cargo to transport, but right now it's off the standard trade routes so I've been having trouble catching a commercial freight transport. A personal freighter would be perfect, but some of the captain's I've spoken to have...raised some questions about their registration." Trace understood that translation well enough: Sielo'tan had realized she was speaking to pirates and smugglers and didn't trust them to release her cargo once they had it. "I did some checking with a few friends, and they said I should speak with you."

The story was common enough in places like this, or at least not completely unheard of. Small-time merchants and traders who made their way to a busy port not realizing the rules changed once they got there, and then learning they were now stuck. Sometimes smart enough to realize they were surrounded by criminals of every stripe, but not smart enough to realize how to escape. This could be a good job, just the thing to get her away from Lesellej...or it could be another, much deeper problem. Sielo'tan didn't radiate malevolence like most of the professional muscle Trace had run into, but she must have topped two meters and her fingers had felt like steel even when just gently squeezing her shoulder. Wherever this conversation went, Trace didn't want her looming over her the whole time. "Why don't we go to one of those tables to talk things over?"

Sielo'tan smiled again and stepped back to make room for Trace to get up. "Thank you."


	2. A Deal at Abrogado-rae

Trace slid onto a bench at one of the cantina's semi-private tables and tried to get a read on Sielo'tan as she sat across from her. She was dressed in a casual ship jumpsuit that was as nondescript as they came, which said she'd probably been traveling the spacelanes for a while but didn't say much else. She wasn't visibly armed that Trace could tell, which either meant she wasn't armed at all or it meant that she was careful (paranoid) enough to be carrying her weapons hidden. The only other reading that Trace could make was that she didn't seem nervous or worried at their surroundings, which Trace would normally take to mean she was used to spending time in dives like this surrounded by possibly-disreputable space bums, but which could have also just meant that she knew nobody except a Gamorrean would be dumb enough to pick a fight with her.

All of this information amounted to very little, and Trace knew she'd have to get the conversation started to pick up anything else. "So, what can I do for you?"

"I represent a consortium of minor mining interests on Tellor who are looking to expand off-planet and are combining their resources. They've charted claims on several neighboring planets and are ready to begin operations, but we're having trouble getting our equipment on-site. We're looking to hire a freighter for the initial equipment transfer and potential follow-ups, possibly even the ore shipments themselves." Sielo'tan pulled out a data pad and laid it flat on the table, with some standard size and mass measurements scrolling across the screen. No information to say what it was being transported, just enough so Trace could judge if it would fit in the _Silver Angel's_ hold.

"Tellor's in the Corporate Sector, right?" Trace picked up the datapad and scanned the figures. "I thought you said this was off the standard trade routes, but if there's one thing the Authority knows how to do it's get mining going and keep the resources coming. There's plenty of credible shipping concerns a lot closer than Abregado."

"These mines were strictly planetary before this, their ore on Tellor was for local use so they don't have any off-planet shipping infrastructure in place. They also don't want word of this getting out to some of the bigger operations that work the Authority so they don't get squeezed out. That's partly why they banded together in the first place, since off Tellor they're purely small-time. Once they get established they can approach the local powers on equal footing. At least, that's the plan." Sielo'tan didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about that plan, which told Trace that she had probably heard the same stories she had about small-time players who worked their way up to the mid-leagues in the Corporate Sector: That's when they became worth taking apart, and they were usually gobbled up by the big combines.

But that wasn't Trace's problem as long as they could pay while they were still small enough to be beneath notice. "Is this one trip to a central depot, or individual drop-offs?"

"One drop-off for the first trip, just the straight shot from Tellor and back. 7,000 credits if there's no extensions." Sielo'tan dropped the figure casually, and Trace had to fight to keep her shock hidden.

7,000 wasn't the largest delivery fee she'd ever collected, but it was definitely the most she'd ever been offered for a 'straight shot'. That kind of money would normally cover multiple cargo stops and was usually part of a large trade mission. Even with the fuel costs and maintenance to get all the way to Tellor from the Abregado system she'd clear more than enough to make up for not just Lesellej's scam, but also her failed efforts to build a trade route over the last three months.

And with _that_ much easy money dangled in front of her as a temptation, she was instantly suspicious. The closest any other client had ever come to this kind of overpaying was when a two-bit smuggler thought he could get her to carry his load of counterfeit holoprojectors for the last leg of his journey (She had shot down that offer when she realized why he was so desperate to get somebody else to finish his delivery for him). "That's a very generous offer," Trace said noncommittally when she was confident she could keep her voice level.

"I'm aware it's above standard rates, but we're paying for your discretion as well." Sielo'tan's tone was still very casual, so either she didn't realize just how far above standard it was or she was practiced at keeping things hidden. "As I said, the consortium doesn't want word getting out just yet, and I've asked around. Everybody says you can keep things to yourself, and we're hoping you'll take that to heart when we talk about potential future work."

Trace mulled that over. Discretion may explain the overpayment at least partially, especially if they had found a really valuable ore load and were truly paranoid about the news getting out. If they were also unused to interplanetary shipping they may not have a good grasp on the standard rates and not realize just how much money they were offering. Plus, If Sielo'tan had been given a lot of leeway when she was sent out, and she had talked to a lot of smugglers and pirates before she was put in touch with Trace, she might been quoted a lot of inflated prices and marked up her own offer to compete when she finally got to Trace. The logic could connect, so it was possible....but not likely. She didn't know what these miners were really transporting, but she doubted it was 'mining equipment'.

But that didn't mean she would automatically say "no" either. Money was money, and just because she wasn't a smuggler by trade didn't mean she had never carried cargo that had been improperly registered. "4,000 in advance," was what she did say, "And we can talk about the follow-ups when they happen."

"Deal," was Sielo'tan's only response, and she extended her hand. Trace gripped it firmly, and noted that her hands were rough and calloused, and also warm to the touch. The handshake lingered perhaps a second longer than normal, then Sielo'tan broke the grip and asked, "When can you leave?"

"I've got to finish up my last commission here," she said. As much as it galled her, Trace still had to visit Lesellej to get her final payment for this fruit delivery, even though she knew part of it would be her own money passed right back to her. And she would have to keep smiling and pretend she hadn't realized she'd been suckered, too. "We can depart tonight after sundown. The _Angel_ is docked at Bay 72."

"Excellent," Sielo'tan grinned, and she rose from the table. "I'll come by in two hours with my personal gear. Thank you, I look forward to working with you." With a polite nod she turned and strode out of the cantina.

Trace's gaze followed her as she left, running their conversation over in her mind again. Sielo'tan had been so blandly calm that Trace' first instinct, that she was some innocent in over her head at Abrogado-rae Spaceport, didn't make sense. But she didn't carry herself like the slimy middlemen who tried to connect her with underworld figures, either. Trace briefly rubbed the fingers of her hand against each other, remembering the feel of her skin, the roughness that said she hadn't grown up in space, and the warmth that said....she shook her head. There'd be time for idle wonderings later. Right now she had to finish dealing with Lesellej, prep the _Silver Angel_ for launch, and make her way to Tellor.

It was only after she dropped a few coins on the table to cover her tab and headed towards the door that she realized Sielo'tan had never said where they were going to take the cargo **to**.


End file.
